Starbleached

Starbleached #1

by Chelsea Gaither

The Overseers have enslaved humanity, and only Adrienne Parker has the cure. Maybe. If the test on the next-to-last free human colony goes smoothly.
Adrienne was given one task when she came to Holton Station: Develop a drug that will take humans off the Overseer menu. It didn’t hurt that her research partner, Dr. Bryan Landry, was hotter than the surface of Alpha Centauri. But that romantic distraction proved fatal. Bryan and Holton station were destroyed, leaving Adrienne alone with Space Marines and two thousand doses of the Landry Enzyme--humanity’s last hope against the Overseers. There are only two free human colonies standing between the aliens and Earth. If the Landry Enzyme doesn’t work, everyone is doomed.
Then Adrienne and the Landry Enzyme are captured before testing can begin. Stranded on a hostile planet with an Overseer renegade, Adrienne is given a terrible choice: help her enemy destroy Bryan’s research, or die as a monster’s midnight snack. Adrienne swears to be defiant to the last; at least she’ll give the alien indigestion.
But when a plague strikes the humans on the renegade’s world, she realizes the space between stars isn’t always so black-and-white…

Genres: Science Fiction

94 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 2, 2012

Reviews

[Chiasmintalia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the blurb, but was disappointed by this book.

At first I thought there would be a couple of flashbacks from the past under the title of then and afterwards the story would stay focused on the now. Instead every chapter is a switch from the past to the present. It almost would have made more sense to have split this story into two parts so that the timeline is more streamlined.

I was interested in the research that Adry did with Bryan and would've liked the author to have spent more time developing the relationship between the two of them.

There's a twist about the identity of the rogue overseer and I disliked this because the twist caused Adry's perception of this overseer to change. It felt wrong to me that Adry was suddenly fine with interacting with him and even went so far as to give him some of her life energy. I didn't think that he had exactly earned her trust even if he had shown that he was unlike the rest of his kind. There wasn't enough to their interactions that justified to me her changes in attitude.

It was never fully explained why the rogue overseer captured Adry. He wanted to help with distribution of the enzyme that she had created? That desire would mean that he would be fine with crippling his race. I assume that the enzyme prevents what amounts to reproduction for the overseers. If the enzyme was given to every human then eventually the overseers would die off. That's pretty serious. The rogue overseer must have strong feelings (that he never mentioned) against his own kind... And why did he leave at the end? He said that he was happy being with Adry.

[Ilona Fenton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to this after reading the blurb and was mightily disappointed. It was a now and then book. As in each part was titled now or then and the whole thing kept jumping in an erratic manner. if the two timelines had had consistency it wouldn't have been too bad but then was (I think) over a year or so time span and even the now was (again, I think) over a month or two. I persevered, but it din't really make any sense timeline wise for me by the end of the book. I doubt if I'll bother reading any more of the series to answer certain questions the reader is left with the time hop is just to erratic for me.